…ok…I admit it…for someone who finds solace in irony…& consumes enough news that if kafka wrote it up I’d probably wake up any day now with a passing resemblance to a cartoon pig

…it might seem like some sort of recursive attempt at a becoming self-sufficient in the stuff…but…I dunno…when da quincey wrote them memoirs of an opium eater supposedly the man was on a daily dose that could fell a horse…possibly an ox, if it had been looking a bit peaky to begin with…&…if nothing else he could fairly claim to know whereof he spoke…but…you know what they say about addicts…so…probably not someone you want to quote in the context of a court, say…anyway…no…I have not been at the laudanum this morning…even the stuff at the very back of the medicine cabinet does not date back to the days of that sort of apothecary assist…but…fair warning & all that sort of thing…I have a strong suspicion this is going to sound like I attempted the philip k dick method of ingesting inadvisable quantities of amphetamines & then trying to murder a keyboard…so I figured I’d try not to just dump you straight in like some sort of early morning ice-bath shock to the system?

…ok…fun part first

An unusual pay package that Tesla devised in 2018 helped make Elon Musk the world’s wealthiest individual.

But a Delaware judge’s ruling that the arrangement was unfair to other Tesla shareholders raises questions about much more than Musk’s net worth, including control of his companies and his ability to fund them — and how corporate leaders are paid.

…presumably…at least I’m presuming…the “how corporate leaders are paid” bit isn’t just the “how come it’s so fucking much?” of it…more the loop the loop swings & roundabouts of options investing reflexively while accruing more of themselves like money that reproduces by mitosis…which…look at IPO valuations & how those allocations work…&…well…exactly what is & isn’t an illegal way to generate really quite substantial amounts of cash money out of the very ether is…murky…in some places more than others…but it makes it difficult to figure some things out that I’d be curious to know

In 2018, Tesla set out 12 milestones tied to market capitalization, revenue and profit targets that Musk needed to reach to qualify for a stock package that is now worth over $50 billion. Experts thought it would be impossible to hit. Yet Musk — who told Andrew at the time that Tesla would hit a $1 trillion market cap within a decade — pulled it off. (He hasn’t taken possession of the shares yet.)

…& not just how he parlayed “hey, I did that – I got this whole thing so astronomically over-valued that I can stand here with a straight face & tell you that fair remuneration would be a fraction of that surplus over & above what we can possibly be worth that would translate into my being the most wealthy individual in the history of being born on third” into the pay deal that’s in limbo…but…his actual position…like…if I were a bit better at fucking with excel & had access to what I have to imagine is some closely guarded personal private fiscal information…I’d know where the tipping point is…& that’d be something I’d keep an eye on

Musk has taken out stock margin loans to finance parts of his business empire. He may find it harder to come up with cash if X needs more money, for example.

…I mean…there’s more than one of those potentially in the running

And corporate governance experts say the ruling is a warning to other business leaders. “It establishes that there is such a thing as excessive compensation,” Sarah Anderson of the Institute for Policy Studies, a progressive research group, told The Times.

What Elon Musk Could Lose After His Big Pay Deal Is Blocked [NYT]

…but the one that piques my curiosity is the leverage thing…& there’s a frustrating tendency for it to be hard to compare like with like when the variables shift over time…but…that CNBC link goes back to when he was buying twitter & has some interesting bits

Musk’s stock debt is outsized relative to the entire stock market. His shares pledged before the Twitter deal account for more than a third of the $240 billion of all shares pledged at all companies listed on the NYSE and Nasdaq, according to Audit Analytics.[…emphasis mine] With the Twitter borrowing, that debt could soar even higher.

Of course, Musk has plenty of cushion, especially since he continues to receive new stock options as part of his 2018 compensation plan. […or…maybe not] His 170 million in fully owned Tesla shares, combined with 73 million in options, give him a potential stake in Tesla of 23%, at a value of over $214 billion. […or whatever the 25%+ he says would make him comfortable about being in the driving seat would tot up to] The rest of his net worth comes from his more than 50% stake in SpaceX […that gets all that good federal money] and his other ventures.

He received another 25 million options as part of the plan this month as Tesla continued to meet its performance targets. While Musk can’t sell the newly received options for five years, he can borrow against them.

Yet Musk’s 11-figure share loans represent an entirely new level of CEO leverage and risk. The risks were highlighted this week as Tesla’s share price slid 12% on Tuesday, chopping more than $20 billion from Musk’s net worth. Shares of Tesla were down less than 1% on Thursday afternoon.
[…]
Jun Frank, managing director at ICS Advisory, ISS Corporate Solutions, said companies are now more aware of the risks of executive pledging, and face greater pressure from investors to limit executive borrowing.

“Pledging of shares by executives is considered a significant corporate governance risk,” Frank said. “If an executive with significant pledged ownership position fails to meet the margin call, it could lead to sales of those shares, which can trigger a sharp share drop in stock price.”

In its SEC filings, Tesla states that allowing executives and directors to borrow against their shares is key to the company’s compensation structure.

“The ability of our directors and executive officers to pledge Tesla stock for personal loans and investments is inherently related to their compensation due to our use of equity awards and promotion of long-termism and an ownership culture,” Tesla said in its filings. “Moreover, providing these individuals flexibility in financial planning without having to rely on the sale of shares aligns their interests with those of our stockholders.”
[…]
The exact amount that Musk has borrowing against his shares remains a mystery. Tesla’s SEC filings show his pledge of 88 million shares, but not how much cash he’s actually borrowed against them. If he pledged the shares in 2020 when Tesla stock was trading at $90, he would have been able to borrow about $2 billion at the time. Today, the borrowing power of those shares has increased tenfold, so he could have room to borrow an additional $20 billion or more against the 88 million shares already pledged. In that case, only about a third of his Tesla stake would be pledged after the Twitter deal.

Yet if he’s increased his borrowing as Tesla shares have risen in value, he may have to pledge additional shares. Analysts say that if Musk has maxed out his borrowing on the 88 million shares (which is highly unlikely) and he has to pledge an additional 60 million shares to fund the Twitter deal, more than 80% of his Tesla fully owned shares would be pledged as collateral.

That would leave him with about $25 billion in Tesla shares unpledged. If he also has to sell $21 billion of Tesla shares to pay the cash portion of the Twitter deal, as well as the accompanying capital gains taxes, virtually all of his remaining fully owned stock would be pledged.

According to SEC filings, Musk sold about $8.4 billion worth of Tesla shares this week. He tweeted Thursday, “No Further TSLA sales planned after today.” Yet his plans for raising the rest of the $21 billion in cash needed for the deal remain unclear.

Elon Musk will be the most indebted CEO in America if the Twitter deal goes through [CNBC]

…now…tesla apparently has something of the order of 3.2 billion shares out in the wild…so…88 million is…for the sake of convenience let’s call it about 2.75% or so…& it would have taken less…60 million…around 1.8-1.9% or so…on top of that to go from “about 1/3 pledged after the twitter deal” to jump to “& that would see 80% of his stock leveraged”…which makes my head hurt because I can’t make those dots join up…even if I use pivot tables…much less plot the shape of the see saw…but…if he’s sitting on 13% the way they’ve been saying lately…that’d be…north of 410 million shares…always assuming they’re all the same sort…which they aren’t always…or even particularly often…& if the 3.18 billion share total is accurate something’s multiplied since “His 170 million in fully owned Tesla shares, combined with 73 million in options“…a bunch of which wouldn’t have invested yet…made for 23% of the ballgame…&…that might be after he’d sold more than the $8.4 billion tranche mentioned above…& maybe leveraged a little more hither or yon…so…since it all feels pretty much arbitrary arbitrage at this point…let’s take the 20% of his 13% stake as as good a figure as any for his currently un-pledged sale-able headroom…for the sake of argument…sounds like he’s got “at least” that theoretically at his disposal…which…at a shareprice of…187.29 when I looked…is…in the ballpark of…a mere $15.5 billion or so if you could find someone to buy ’em off you…& nobody panicked after the first few billion hit the ticker tape parade…but when he had a few more of the things a 12% price dip trimmed $20 billion off his net worth…so…how big a haircut does tesla…a notoriously over valued entity…have to take before the dip in the shareprice puts twitter’s worst main character underwater on his loan payments…& circling some sort of seething maelstrom of a financial drain with a whole suite of c-suites clamoring for a shot at hitting up the margin calls hotline…I don’t have an answer for you…I just wanna know when someone figures it out…which is apparently harder than tracking the tail number on a private airplane…anyway…if the idea that, say…a buck twenty-five a share on tesla would see schrodinger’s richest asshole into negative equity with about a 1/3 less headroom & potentially unravel something not entirely unlike china’s evergrande…doesn’t do it for you…I’m extra sorry…because it gets a lot less fun from here?

With all due respect to the judges on the second-highest court in the land, what on earth is taking so long? Yes, the wheels of justice grind slowly, etc., but they don’t have to, especially not when the case is an easy one and the entire country is waiting to find out if one of the two likely major-party candidates for president is a convicted criminal. Each day that goes by makes it more likely Trump will not face trial for his attempt to overthrow the last election before he runs in the next one.

A brief refresher: The trial was scheduled to begin on March 4. Everything was moving ahead normally until Trump tried to stop the action by claiming he cannot be prosecuted for anything, ever. This argument is absurd on its face. The trial judge, Tanya Chutkan, would have been within her rights to toss it out as frivolous. She didn’t, because unlike Trump, she takes the rule of law seriously.

Judge Chutkan heard the arguments and ruled promptly against Trump, whose tenure, she said, “did not bestow on him the divine right of kings to evade the criminal accountability that governs his fellow citizens.” This is without question the correct ruling. Trump knows this, but he appealed it anyway, because he knows that an immunity claim is one of the few things that stops a trial in its tracks until it is resolved, and his entire goal is endless delay.

This isn’t a complicated matter for the appeals court. Every working woman and man in America has to meet deadlines all the time; every litigant before judges has to meet deadlines. Come to think of it, judges are almost the only workers in America who are rarely required to meet deadlines. This is one of those times. They work for the American people, and democracy is on the line.

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/01/30/opinion/thepoint/trump-immunity-court

…how many times we going to be hearing that betwixt today & november-time?

It has become a cliché to say that every election is the most important of our lifetimes, but the looming contest between President Biden and former president Donald Trump really is. This will be a referendum not only on the future of American democracy but also on the future of America’s role in the world.

…&…ok…opinions differ…if you’re…say…called noam…then maybe you call it hegemony

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hegemony_or_Survival

…but…a lot of people prefer “the world’s policeman”…mostly not people known for liking KRS-One…but…it is what it is

Ever since World War II, the United States has played a vital, indeed indispensable, leadership role in the world. It continues to play that role today. You can see it in the U.S. military action, in cooperation with allies, in Yemen to safeguard shipping through the Bab al-Mandab Strait — a maritime chokepoint that handles a third of the world’s container ship traffic — from Houthi missiles and drones. Other U.S. troops stand guard from Poland to South Korea to protect allies against aggressors. In all, there are some 171,000 U.S. military personnel deployed across 750 bases in at least 80 countries. Notwithstanding the tragic loss of three service members in a drone attack on a U.S. base in Jordan on Sunday, most of these deployments keep the peace without incurring any casualties.

Along with being the world’s policeman, the United States is also the world’s chief diplomat, spearheading efforts to address vital concerns such as public health, climate change and human rights.
[…]
In Trump’s first term, he did not manage to overturn more than 70 years of American global leadership, but he certainly undermined it. He pulled out of the Paris Climate Accords, the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Iran nuclear accord. He tried to pull all U.S. forces out of Syria and about a third of them out of Germany. He temporarily blocked arms deliveries to Ukraine to coerce President Volodymyr Zelensky into helping him politically. He launched a pointless trade war with China that inflicted considerable costs on the U.S. economy.
[…]
But it’s a safe bet Trump will not be appointing any moderates next time. He has vowed to purge apolitical civil servants — a.k.a. “Communists, Marxists, Racists, and Radical Left Thugs.” The Heritage Foundation is compiling long lists of MAGA loyalists to staff a Trump administration.

Thus, there would be little — aside from his own mental fog — to stop Trump from carrying out his isolationist agenda. According to Thierry Breton, a senior European Union official, Trump in 2020 told E.U. leaders “that if Europe is under attack we will never come to help you and to support you” and “NATO is dead, and we will leave, we will quit NATO.” Congress recently passed legislation to prevent a president from exiting NATO without congressional approval, but Trump could still make the alliance a dead letter by refusing to honor the Article 5 obligation to defend members under attack.

…but…the popstar dating the football player is the end of the fucking world…gotta keep that in mind or I might lose all sense of perspective

You might expect that, while caving to Russia, Trump would take a tougher line against China. And it’s true that he promises to revoke China’s most-favored-nation trade status and impose tariffs of up to 60 percent on Chinese goods — actions that could lead to a breakdown of the global trade system. But he also says he might not come to Taiwan’s defense because it “took all of our chip business.” So, bizarrely, he seems more exercised about China trading with other nations than invading them.

…deep breaths…deep breaths…god forbid the man ever develops enough of a brain to know how AI & processors are industrially related…it’s…deep breaths…a good thing…there, now – here’s a paper bag – breathe into that…it’ll help…it’s a good thing he doesn’t know how fucking dumb that sounds…or we might be more fucked than we look…no…fuck…look…I can’t do it…it shouldn’t be fucking possible for it to make us worse off if the guy who was fucking president of the actual US of A was less of a fucking moron…damn it

Of course, it’s entirely possible that a lot of what Trump says is mere bluster and that he would do something entirely different in office. As John Bolton wrote last August in the Hill, “Trump’s approach to decisionmaking verges on incoherence”: He “disdains knowledge,” listens “to the last person in the door” and sees all U.S. relationships “as matters of personality” — so he is favorably inclined toward foreign leaders who flatter him. Perhaps democratic leaders can get on Trump’s good side by letting him win at golf — or staying at his hotels.

…it’s not like anyone asked for a fucking rocket scientist to be in charge instead or anything…don’t get so worked up…you’ll burst a blood vessel way you’re going…& then where will you be, eh?

The conventional wisdom is that foreign policy doesn’t decide U.S. elections, but the choice has seldom been this scary or stark. The November election will decide whether America continues its post-1945 internationalist foreign policy — or risks a return to the pre-Pearl Harbor policy of isolationism. How did that work out?

If Trump wins, he will destroy the American-led world order [WaPo]

…well, shit…lemme think about that one, max

As the Biden administration grapples with a spiraling set of crises in the Middle East, the Republican presidential front-runner has seized on the moment to score political points. A drone attack launched by an Iran-affiliated militant group based in Iraq hit a U.S. base on the Jordanian-Syrian border over the weekend, killing three U.S. troops and wounding dozens of others. Some Republicans in Washington want the White House to pursue severe, escalatory measures, including targeted strikes within Iran.

President Biden’s apparent desire to calibrate the response and avoid a wider conflict with Iran offered plenty of grist for Trump’s spinning mill. “This brazen attack on the United States is yet another horrific and tragic consequence of Joe Biden’s weakness and surrender,” Trump posted on social media, adding that such a strike on U.S. forces in the region “would NEVER have happened” on his watch.

…& vlad wouldn’t have invaded ukraine…& gaza would be in one piece…&…hitler wouldn’t have invaded poland

Attacks on U.S. positions in Iraq and Syria did take place while Trump was president. But that’s besides the point: Trump and a number of his Republican colleagues are pinning the sense of chaos in the region on the Biden administration, and setting that against the image of “peace through strength” that the former president sought to cultivate.

Taking a wrecking ball to diplomacy with Tehran, Trump broke the nuclear deal forged between Iran and world powers, restored a slate of sanctions on the Islamic Republic and assassinated influential Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commander Qasem Soleimani in a 2020 drone strike. Trump’s policy on Israel, meanwhile, amounted to a tight bear hug of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the boosting of the agenda of the Israeli right. He was punitive to the Palestinians — markedly shifting U.S. policy against them by formally recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, shuttering a U.S. consulate intended for Palestinians, and brokering “peace” deals between Israel and a clutch of Arab monarchies that further sidelined Palestinian political aspirations.

…& joe “well, I can’t very well be less of a friend to israel than that that guy” biden…well…we know where that got us…rightly or wrongly…& meanwhile…over at the ayatollah

[…]struggled to make any headway on Iran — Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign led to an even more hard-line, uncompromising government taking hold in Tehran and the Iranian regime unshackling its nuclear program and dispensing with the measures of transparency that had been mandated by the nuclear deal.

Earlier this month, Rafael Grossi, the U.N.’s atomic agency chief, said Iran’s nuclear program was “galloping ahead” and urged for diplomacy to fill the breach “to prevent the situation deteriorating to a degree where it would be impossible to retrieve it.” Now, as the White House contemplates opening new fronts of conflict with Iran, diplomacy is not in the picture.

“Iran was not dissuaded from pursuing its nuclear quest — quite the contrary,” wrote Le Monde columnist Gilles Paris this week, referring to Trump’s legacy in the region. “America’s word has been devalued, which partly explains the inability of Biden’s administration to re-engage with Tehran. Nor has the Islamic Republic been driven back into its borders, as witnessed by the resilience of the ‘axis of resistance’ after October 7, which unexpectedly expanded with attacks in the Red Sea by its Yemeni allies, the Houthis.”

The likelihood of an Iranian nuclear weapon is far greater now than it was in 2018, when Trump killed the deal against the wishes of many Western allies. “Iranian leaders may see acquiring nuclear weapons as a way to gain newfound assurance that it won’t be attacked by Israel or the United States — freeing the axis of resistance to wreak far more havoc,” wrote Ali Vaez in Foreign Affairs. “Plus, Iranian officials who want the country to get a nuclear weapon (Tehran itself is likely divided on whether to go nuclear) could view this as a moment of great opportunity. Iran’s rivals, after all, are distracted by the wars in Gaza and Ukraine, competition with China, and elections.”

…uhh…hhuuhhhh…so…between that &…uhh…the…other thing

[Trump] also encouraged the acceleration of Israel’s far-right drift. David Friedman, Trump’s ambassador to Israel, is a deeply ideological champion of the Jewish settler movement and an open skeptic of the two-state solution — the vision of two Israeli and Palestinian states existing side-by-side that has been the official policy of successive Democratic and Republican administrations. Friedman and a coterie of other Trump officials set about emboldening Netanyahu and his allies, who embarked on a series of settlement expansions and seemed forever poised to carry out de jure annexation of parts of the occupied West Bank. Their efforts poured more dirt on the grave of the two-state solution at a time when the Palestinian national movement itself was in crisis and the Palestinian cause seemed even less of a priority among Arab governments.

…not kidding about the dirt on the grave line, neither

“He speaks continuously about this need to impose a two-state solution, which I think is tone-deaf right now,” Friedman told an Israeli TV network this week, referring to Biden. He also criticized Biden’s apparent attempts to lower the intensity of the Israeli campaign — which has killed more than 26,000 Palestinians, the majority women and children, in a matter of months. “At no time did the United States put any handcuffs or limitations on Israel’s ability to respond” when Trump was in office, Friedman said.

…if he’s their idea of what america sounds like…no fucking wonder this is the way they think

While Palestinians have always criticized the United States as an unfair broker in the conflict, the Trump administration put its whole weight on the Israeli side of the scale and asked for no Israeli concessions in return. Its much-derided peace plan[*] that it unveiled in 2020 dispensed with any illusion of creating a viable, sovereign Palestinian state; the Palestinian leadership wasn’t even briefed on Trump’s stillborn “deal of the century.” Erased from the international conversation and subject to an increasingly impotent Palestinian Authority, the Palestinian public slumped into the depths of disillusionment and despair.

[*] …was that the one where jared solved the middle east…sounds about right…how did it sound, again…oh, yeah…”It posits a four-year road map during which the Palestinians can meet a set of conditions to achieve an autonomous state, which, even then, will still be subject to the whims and diktats of the Israeli military. It renders Israel the ultimate judge of whether Palestinians deserve their full political rights and lays out the blueprint for a form of perennial occupation.“…that’ll be the derision, I imagine…really withered the blow, I’ll bet…“The plan announced is a 180-page hate letter from the Americans (and by extension the Israelis) to the Palestinians,” wrote Daniel Levy, a former Israeli negotiator and diplomat. “Until one reads the entire document (and unless one knows the history of the conflict), it is hard to convey the depth of contempt and scorn this text displays toward Palestinians. It oozes colonialist supremacism.”…so…that worked out like a business with deep involvement from a member of the trump family cabal, didn’t it?

“There’s no going back on what we’ve been able to do,” Friedman said in a 2021 interview with the New York Times. “I’m frankly somewhere between addicted and intoxicated with what I’ve been able to do, and how much joy it gives me.”

Behind Biden’s Middle East crises is the long tail of Trump’s legacy [WaPo]

…&…world’s chief of police or not…ol’ joe don’t exactly have the market cornered on owning that crisis

A map charting the geographical spread of violence around the Middle East and beyond since 7 October [Guardian]

…or…we roll the dice on…the other option

When everything was uncertain and everyone’s future was on the line, we walked right up to the precipice of a moral breakthrough, and then we turned back.

Look at the way we all accustomed ourselves to the term “essential worker,” an ostensible term of respect that instead condemned people to work in manifestly dangerous conditions. The adoption of that term made visible something we now cannot unsee: In the United States the people we rely on most to keep our world functioning are the people we treated as disposable.

If social isolation wasn’t the core problem — most of the people I interviewed that year said they felt connected to friends and family, however far away they were — we might call the bigger problem structural isolation: abandoned by employers, deprived of shared purpose, denied care. The combined effect sent a strong message that individual lives weren’t worth as much anymore. (Did elected officials take to the airwaves and suggest that old people sacrifice themselves to save the economy? Yes, that really happened.)

People treated one another accordingly. We all remember the viral videos of people screaming at one another in supermarkets and on public transportation. Violent crime spiked. Even reckless driving surged — but it happened only in the United States.

We Were Wrong About What Happened to America in 2020 [NYT]

…or…failing that…the next-to-dumbest?

What happens if Trump can’t run? [WaPo]

…I mean if there’s one thing that seems certain at this point in proceedings…it’s that no immunity is absolute enough to cover this guy’s bases

…it’s not like the fate of the world’s at stake or anything…probably just humanity’s…so…no biggie?